We All Miss (Fill In The Blank)

We All Miss (Fill In the Blank)

John Paul Derryberry

This past Thursday, I was supposed to be at Hawkeye Community College in Waterloo, Iowa, at one of my favorite events every year.  I would have been sitting in a classroom, answering questions, sharing stories, and trying to help people understand what it means to go into social work. I would have laughed. I would have given some off the wall answer that would have made the students contemplate. They, in turn, would have asked a question that stumped me. The experience would have put me in a good mood for some time. 

We all have a shortlist of events, people, places, and interactions that put us into the most exquisite versions of ourselves. I know my list well. I spend the majority of my life attempting to experience them as many times as possible. Life is too short to deny ourselves these types of moments. I never understood why people avoid the good stuff about life so much. There are nine honest to goodness feelings that light up my life:

1) A kiss from my wonderful wife.
2) Big hugs from my little girls.
3) Lying in my hammock after a long day of hiking and swaying in the breeze.
4) Crossing the halfway point in my run. 
5) The drive home after a great time hanging with family and/or friends.
6) Playing with my dog in the snow.
7) Finishing a Sazerac in a bar or restaurant in New Orleans. 
8) Drinking a beer while starring at Lake Superior on the North Shore of Minnesota. 
9) And finally, standing in front of a group of people and telling my stories. 

I ached on Thursday, not being able to go do what I love, telling stories that connected preserved differences into apparent connections. The laughter, the sense of contact, and the release of emotions is such a morale booster for me. There is something about a live audience that moves me into high gear. I would be beyond selfish to not acknowledge that I'm not the only one missing out on what they love. We all are. Also, many are missing who they love and that could possibly be permanent. Their ache has 1,000 times more depth, layers, and intensity than mine. 

The point is, that even in these uncertain and unusual times, we have a binding agent holding society together. We all miss something, someone, someplace. Social distancing and isolation can feel exactly how it sounds. It's super tough to get the mental and emotional reminder we need to know that we do not suffer this alone. I know your list is different than mine, mostly because most people have a greater fear of public speaking than death. 

That's not why I shared my list with you. It's because you sit huddled in your home. You also miss and I wanted you to know: I do too. Maybe the most essential sentence to communicate with others is, I do too.  Those three words convey an understanding of the human experience. We can miss, and even though we miss different types of things, we all ache over the predicament we are in. No easy answers, no fluff about it gets better, no panhandling self-help advice. This is hard because of what we miss. Because, what we miss was so amazing.